HOUSE NEWS: A special Roundtable with Vickie, and anyone up for a Lenten Bible study?

ROUNDTABLE WITH OUR OWN VICKIE MACHADO THIS WEEK! We’re really excited to have our own Vickie Machado as the featured speaker for this month’s Roundtable. The theme will be “The Catholic Worker Movement and Bioregionalism” and the Roundtable takes place on Thursday at 6:30pm until 8pm. Vickie has been a community member for the past two years, and a part of the extended community of the GCW for much longer than that! She is a MA student in Religion and Nature at UF and has been presenting on various aspects of Catholic Worker thought and practice at conferences, etc. for the past few years. For this Roundtable, she’ll be presenting a version of her thesis, which she is set to present and defend to her committee in early March. Here is a blurb on the thesis: “The purpose of my thesis is to understand the sustainability of the Catholic Worker movement today with regards to bioregionalism. While the main foundations of the movement are important to its success, the sustainability of Catholic Worker houses and communities does not solely come from its principal groundwork, but rather, as I suggest, from how these concepts are continually and accordingly implemented with careful regard to both time and location. I find that current Catholic Workers have sustained themselves over the years due to their adaptability and fluidness. Rather than adopting the same model in every location, each house and community fills its own niche for the region in which it operates.” So come listen to and support Vickie this Thursday! And don’t forget to bring a dish to share if you can!

THANKS FOR HELPING FILL VOLUNTEER SLOTS (MORE STILL AVAILABLE THOUGH!): We’re so grateful for the response to our plea for some new regular volunteers who could commit to weekly slots. We have filled all three of the four breakfast slots with at least one extra volunteer, but still are looking for someone to help out on Thursday mornings between 7-9. Let us know if you’re interested. And we can still use another extra person for any of the other breakfast slots–the more the merrier! For the cafe, we got 2 new weekly volunteers for the afternoon, but we could still use at least one extra for the morning, between 10 and noon. And as usual, we can always fit in an extra pair of hands at any time during the cafe!

SCRIPTURE STUDY FOR LENT? We’re thinking of starting up a Scripture study for Lent this year and we’re interested in hearing if this might be something others would like to commit to and join us for. John would lead a study of the gospel readings throughout the Lenten season, each Wednesday evening, from 7:30 until around 9. If you’re up for this as a Lenten practice for yourself, email us and let us know. If we get a committed group of 6-8 folks, we’ll start next Wednesday, February 13th. Email us at gvillecw@yahoo.com.

ART FOR ALL VALENTINES: Art for All folks continue to design and make beautiful Valentines each Saturday. The card-making and other crafts associated with Valentine’s Day will continue this Saturday from 1-4pm. If you’d like to purchase a special, handmade Valentine’s from the Art for All project for $2, stop by the house anytime this week betwen 1-5pm. Click here for a photo of some of what they’re designing.

As we mentioned in a previous post, we published the latest edition of our newsletter, Conspire, last week and we now have copies available at the house. You can also see a PDF version online by clicking here. Hope to see many of you this week!